Nearly 75 percent of Georgians—including 62 percent of Republicans—don't want to see abortion criminalized before viability.Krisztian Elek/SOPA/Sipa/AP Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Two weeks after the deaths of two Georgia women highlighted the very real risks to maternal health posed by the state’s six-week abortion ban, a judge has thrown out that draconian law, declaring it unconstitutional in a remarkable ruling that drips with sarcasm and rage. It’s a resounding legal victory in a key swing state that is likely to reverberate throughout the South—at least temporarily.

“A review of our higher courts’ interpretations of ‘liberty’ demonstrates that liberty in Georgia includes…the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her health care choices,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote in a 26-page order issued Monday. “When a fetus growing inside a woman reaches viability, when society can assume care and responsibility for that separate life, then—and only then—may society intervene,” he added.

“Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote,” McBurney writes. “Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy, even taking into consideration whatever bundle of rights the not-yet-viable fetus may have.”